The Church Ladies

by Lisa Samson

“Is Josh in heaven?” Angus asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “That’s good,” he said.

  I wished Chris and Gary could say the same. It’s such a frightening world at times, filled with questions, mysteries, and wonders. And there are times when only faith gets me through, when I have to stop asking questions for just a moment, long enough to catch my breath and remember that God is good. We are His children, and He really does know what is best.

  Each day I awaken and pray for grace and wisdom and enough faith to keep me from losing the very same.

  “ ‘I believe,’ ” I whispered. “ ‘Lord, help thou my unbelief.’ ”

  “That verse is in there for a reason, baby.” Mildred reached out and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s in there so we know those kind of feelings are normal. So we know that our humanity is understood by God, that He can handle any question we’ve got.”

  I wiped my moistened eyes with a corner of my napkin. “So where is the line between honest questions and disrespect?”

  She pointed a finger and rested it on my heart. “In there.”

  I cried again. Deep groans of deeper doubt and utter helplessness. “I need to do something, Miss Mildred. Just something. I don’t know what.”

  “I guess all we can do is pray.”

  “I’ve been doing that.”

  “Me, too, Penelope.”

  Angus looked up from his chair and away from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. “What’s that verse Dad always says before prayer meetings? ‘Where two or three are gathered together—’ ”

  Mildred smiled at him as she finished. “ ‘There am I in your midst.’ That boy is right, Penelope. We need to be praying together for your friend.”

  I scrutinized the two faces before me, both skinny, different colors and different ages, and I wondered two things as I blew my nose and dried my eyes once again. How did my five-year-old child have more sense than I did? And why did a wise woman like Mildred LaRue call a foolish woman like me her friend?

  “I’m leaving for Nags Head tomorrow morning for a five-day gig. I’ll be back on Monday That night good for you?” Mildred asked.

  I ran my finger over the stippled curve of an orange in a fruit bowl on the hoosier. “Yeah. What time?” I sniffed the freshness of the peel.

  “Six-thirty. And come hungry.”

  “Food, too, as well as prayer?”

  Mildred stood to her feet and grabbed her coat from the rack by the door. “Haven’t got the leading to start fasting yet, Penelope.”

  “Where you up and going to?” I asked. Hardly a surprise, though, because Mildred always left abruptly.

  Mildred waved a graceful hand. “To church. The pastor’s wife is in a tizzy. Seems some of the ladies have been gossiping about her.”

  “In church?” I let out a melodramatic gasp.

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Well, the woman wears her hair much too short and acts like some queen, so she’s got it coming to her.”

  “What are you going to say?”

  “I have no idea.”

  So Mildred went off in a flurry of green clothes and righteous indignation.

  During the Beatles’ era, I had been a “John girl” and Chris had been a “Paul girl.” It pretty much described our differences in character and personality, for while Chris has always been a fan of the obvious, I prefer the obscure. But not the downright weird. The “Ringo girl” ruled that territory. The only “Ringo girl” I ever knew had been the sole and founding member of the Cryptogram and Word Search Puzzler Club and was named Samantha Regina—pronounced with a long i. The fact that Chris couldn’t understand why I proclaimed myself a “John girl” always picked at me. I could see the appeal of Paul, straight up. Cute, pleasingly crooked teeth, that mop of brown hair and those droopy eyes that said, “Love, love me do.” But Chris could only say John’s “nose looks like an arrow pointing straight down to an angry, sneering mouth.”

  Chris never forgave him for his spiritual influence on the time. Although she truly did feel sad that someone murdered him. I had to give her that. “He was your guy, Poppy,” Chris had said the day she’d heard the news and called to check on me.

  “Yeah. He was.” But I didn’t feel as sad as I thought I should have. Some people are destined to quickly blister, then pop. But a sense of completion prevails, a sense of destiny contained like a serum within the whole blistery situation And then a healing could begin, leaving a callus. Like Princess Diana—now that death came as a shock to me, yes, but then it ceased to be surprising. Or James Dean. Or John Bonham. Marilyn Monroe. Same thing.

  But not Josh. No, he didn’t fit this category at all. He wasn’t supposed to be dead yet. Josh never acted like some shooting star, some burning bush. Josh grew up regular, a nice kid who would have made a wonderful father, wouldn’t have minded mowing the lawn every Saturday as long as he could sit and watch the Hopkins game undisturbed for the latter part of the afternoon. Josh would have sat at the dinner table with his youngest child on his lap, balancing his buttered peas on his fork so they didn’t drop into freshly washed, feathery hair.

  Miss Mildred said God has enough respect for us to let us suffer the consequences of our free decisions. All well and good in theory, I say. But what about the drunks that walk away from the accidents they’ve caused, while some innocent wife is groping around the scene desperately feeling for a pulse on her baby trapped in its carseat, or hollering at her husband with tearful cries of, “Say something, Phil! Oh, God, please say something!” So Josh did a stupid thing. He climbed up a tower, lost his footing, and died.

  Did his guardian angel fall down on the job? Did God forget that verse about bearing us up lest we dash our foot against a stone?

  I shoved the questions from my mind, unable to bear the contemplation just then.

  The day felt warm for a March Wednesday. Sixty degrees at noon. I pulled on some leggings, a T-shirt, a nylon anorak, and my walking shoes. After stuffing a five-dollar-bill in the pouch pocket on my front, I grabbed Angus’s windbreaker and walked into the sunroom. “Wanna go be with Daddy a little while?”

  “Okay.” He got up looking five years old. He always looked his age when his mouth stayed shut. “Can I take my book?” His hand clutched The House with a Clock in its Walls.

  “I’m sure that would make Daddy happy.”

  Duncan appeared far from pleased after I walked across the expanse from house to church. But he knew better than to cross me, I guessed. I had pasted that look on me face, that “Think twice, Bucko” expression I’d learned from my mother, who’d learned it from my grandmother—all too familiar with that set to the eyes that stubborn women inherit from stubborn women. He merely clenched his jaw, refused to look me in the eye, and asked what he should fix for lunch.

  “Hot dogs. And I’m one of your parishioners, too, you know, Duncan.”

  He knew when he married me I was like this, my German maiden name being the giveaway. Fair warning and all. I’m careful not to abuse the privilege, though.

  “Duncan?”

  “Yeah, babe.”

  “That verse about ‘giving His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways,’ and the ‘lest thou dash thy foot against a stone’ part?”

  “Uh-huh. Do you have a question about that?”

  I nodded. “Isn’t that some kind of promise to us believers?”

  His ire faded instantly, and he shook his head. “No, hon. That verse is talking about the Messiah. The Bible never promises we won’t have pain and suffering.”

  “But what about the hairs of your head verse? And the lilies and the sparrows?”

  Angus tugged on my jacket. “Can I go down to the nursery and play with the toys?”

  “Sure, buddy,” Duncan said, and he took my hand. “Babe, if the Bible really did promise us no pain, and if God’s love was measured by the amount of pain we suffered, this would be a really lousy religion and one that fails all the time.”

  “
I know.”

  “God never promised we wouldn’t suffer. We all wish He would have, but He really never did. And even that verse about the sparrow. What is it that He’s watching the sparrow do?”

  “Fall.”

  I closed my eyes and wept once more.

  Duncan folded me into his arms and whispered. “If He sees the sparrows fall, Popp, He saw Josh fall, too.” He pulled back and looked into my eyes. “The Lord was there with Josh, Poppy. He was. ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.’ ”

  The crying felt good, cleansing, and powerful and so I took advantage of the church pastor and stayed within the circle of his arms for the next ten minutes.

  So I walked alone along Lake Shore Drive, waving to parishioners as they passed by in their really nice, nonputtied, noncoathangered cars. I ignored everything else. Java Jane’s and two lattes. That was my destination, and then I would think about what to say after that. What would Chris think, me just barging in with my key, espresso drinks in hand? It didn’t matter. The time to act like a best friend arrived. Not just a friend who respectfully stood back and let her best friend isolate herself because that’s what she says she wants. No, that’s not what best friends do. Best friends scream and yell and jerk their friends by the throat with a roaring “Stop it! Say something! Anything!”

  Don’t they?

  How come I couldn’t read Chris like I used to? Why didn’t I know what to do instinctively now?

  No, those thoughts would save until after Java Jane’s. I’d think about it in a few minutes.

  Margaret tended the coffee shop by herself. “A latte? Really?” she asked when I placed the order. “You hardly ever get lattes, Poppy. Must be a special day.”

  “Just trying to cheer up a friend.”

  “Oh, good choice then.”

  Margaret, her mane of brown hair swept back in a ponytail, began to make the drink, banging the little filter basket. “You haven’t been here in a while. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. I’ll get back to my routine now that it’s warmer. You all doing okay?”

  “Uh-huh. Ellen’s away for a week, though. Gone on a cruise down in the Caribbean. She goes away by herself every once in a while. Likes the Norwegian cruise line.”

  “I hear they’ve got the best looking attendants.”

  Margaret shrugged. “If you like blondes.”

  “Been busy?”

  “No more than usual. So, this friend of yours, will she need a good scone too? I baked apricot ones this morning.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s really a tragedy she’s gone through. A latte will do.”

  “Got ya.”

  Margaret handed me the drinks. “See you tomorrow morning then? It’s supposed to be another nice one.”

  “Okay.”

  Hoping that commitment possessed enough potency to get me out of bed at 5 A.M., I resumed my mission.

  The drinks felt good in my hands, warm, smooth, and tidy beneath their dependable lids. But their questionable nature remained, and a feeling of unsurety settled in the pit of my stomach as I wondered just how Chris would react.

  Chris refused the latte. “How can I? With Josh gone and all?”

  I let mine get cold, too. How do you drink your own latte after that? But Chris had let me in, and that could definitely be considered progress. She looked horrible. But she didn’t smell that way, so at least she had enough strength to shower. “Are you eating?”

  “Some.”

  “Okay. How’s Gary?”

  “I’m not sure. He doesn’t come down here much.”

  We sat together in Josh’s room. His school trunks had been mailed back home and were stacked near the door. Big labels, with clumsy, El-Marko lettering screaming his parents’ names. No longer Josh’s things, but not really theirs either.

  Chris looked up, the hollows of her eyes made darker by the gloom of the room. Only the desk light cast its jaundiced rays upon the green blotter. A sicklier light I couldn’t imagine. The dehumidifier hummed, but the room smelled discarded somehow.

  “They found out he was drinking,” Chris said and laid back on the pillow. “That’s what the autopsy showed. I didn’t know how to even tell you that.”

  “Have you been sleeping down here, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  I sat some more, looking around. The room was still as neat as Josh had probably left it. “I’m going to go clean the kitchen.”

  “Okay. That would be nice.” Chris turned and faced the wall. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” she called as I moved toward the threshold.

  “Yeah. Josh was drinking.”

  “So who’s to blame then? Us or him?”

  I said nothing. Just went up the stairs.

  Twelve

  I scoured the kitchen, lugged laundry from the first floor to the basement, then back again. After vacuuming the wood floors and the carpets, even the disquieting square footage beneath the colonial blue living room sofa, I arranged the shoes at the bottom of Chris’s closet.

  And pass the Kleenex!

  Dust now coated the black church shoes, inside and out. Chris felt so proud and excited about those shoes. Ninety-eight dollars reduced down to twenty-four. Cole Haans. Thick, shiny kind of leather. Not rube shoes. Two-inch heels. Substantial leather soles.

  The latte visit had been four days ago. And every day since I’d spent time trying to get Chris’s house back to normal while Angus did his school-work at the kitchen table. Well, my definition of normal, anyway. Once I finished, the place would be cleaner than the day they moved in. Chris now spent her time in the kitchen doing cryptograms like a Ringo girl, thank God, and I literally meant that. So now, after hurrying through my Red-Eye, I stopped at Broomheller’s IGA and picked up the latest edition of Pencil Puzzles and Word Games. Once again, that checkout girl named Sunny lived up to her name. Every day she did, the sweet thing. I have never been described as sweet. Of course I never looked like Sunny either. Long, straight blond hair and a wide, perfect face. Green eyes, too. At sixteen, I would have given anything for green eyes when Mother forced me to go to the school mixers. Girls with green eyes seemed to get asked to dance more than plain old, brown-eyed girls.

  I knew I should read up on helping someone deal with grief, climb through the Internet, find out about the various stages. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t reduce Chris to that. I couldn’t start second-guessing what stage she was actually in, gauge whether she had, indeed, gone from one stage to the other, or whether she had reverted back to a previous one. I was no psychologist. I didn’t want to be a psychologist; I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. I only wanted to be a friend, to do the dishes, to vacuum, to launder, to keep the kind of things going that I knew how to keep going.

  And what right did I have to give advice to anybody anyway? Especially Chris. Now all those chummy conversations with Josh about Greek campus life sickened me. Even the most innocent of conversations can turn around and spew mace at your heart.

  Gary arrived home from the Sunday night service at Mount Oak Community. He kept himself moving, handling it all so much differently than his wife. Not yet preaching, he attended all the services, even the repeats, sitting in the back with those deep purple circles under his eyes. He talked to Duncan and his deacons, and he yelled at God at 2 A.M. Or at least that’s what the nosy neighbor next door said when I arrived after cleaning up my Sunday brunch earlier that afternoon. I just rolled my eyes and let myself inside. After I cleaned the bathroom, I ran a nice hot foaming bath for Chris, lit a couple of Gardenia scented candles, and told my friend to go soak for a while.

  “So is it true, Gare?” I asked him when he walked into the kitchen, laying a hand on his very wrinkled, long-sleeved polo shirt. “You really yelling at God in the middle of the night and all?” I’d definitely take home some ironing.

  “Minnie-Belle telling tales again?” You could tell he tried his best not to let his feelings out, but his hoarse voice was stiffer th
an a trampoline spring.

  “Thought I’d better make sure it’s true.” I handed him a cup of decaf and began to slice up a vine-ripened tomato: $3.99 a pound at the IGA. For a tomato!

  He cleared his throat and sat down at the kitchen table. “Thanks. Nah, Popp. It’s not true. I feel like it, though.” He set down the cup after taking a sip.

  I salted the slices. “I guess so.”

  “I been watching a lot of TV real late. Didn’t think I had it loud enough for the neighbors to hear. And Minnie-Belle would have complained if it were.”

  “Yeah.” I sat down with the plate of tomatoes and slid them over to Gary. With the way Angus eats, subversive nutrition is my specialty. “I want to ask all sorts of questions, Gare. And I want to say all sorts of things, but everything that comes to mind sounds wrong. Maybe I should just blurt it out without thinking first.”

  “I know. I’m a preacher, remember? I’ve sat in your chair more than my own.” He put a slice of tomato in his mouth.

  “Yeah.”

  Gary placed a hand on my forearm as he swallowed. “You’re just here. That’s enough. Chris has been a lot better without the housework wearing down on her. I did all I could, but I’m only one person.”

  “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “It’s a lot.” He quickly ate another slice.

  “I wish I were altruistic about it. The fact is, it makes me feel better.”

  “Good.”

  “How was church tonight?”

  “Fine. But I find myself tearing up during the musical numbers now. Remember”—he released a strangled little chuckle—“how Josh always loved to play the guitar up there?”

  “Yeah.” I did. “He’d really get into it.”

  “I miss him.”

  “I know. Me, too.”

  “And every day something new pops up, a memory that I hadn’t thought of before. And each new memory brings on the flood all over again.”

  I took his hand and squeezed. “I dreamed about him the other night, and it was so real.”

  Gary eagerly jumped on that, picking up another slice of tomato. “That’s happened to me a lot. Two nights ago I dreamed we were sitting on the couch in front of the TV eating cereal and laughing at Bugs Bunny; both in our flannel boxers. And suddenly I looked over at him, and I said, ‘But you’re dead, Josh,’ and he started to fade away. I cried out, ‘No,’ and he reached out and just said, ‘Dad.’ That was all, just ‘Dad.’ ” His voice, abraded by pain, lowered. “I awoke feeling like I had been given a gift. Like I’d had him back again for just a little while.”